Emancipation occurred in Hayti in 1792, as an incident of the French Revolution, and the negroes rose and exterminated every man, woman and child of the white race in the island, with atrocious and revolting details unrecorded. They then set up a republic, a military despotism it was, and such it has remained. Splendid sugar and coffee plantations left untilled, grew up in wild growths, the rich resources of the island were consumed. For a brief space the orderly habits of the white race flickered, and then went out in darkness, eclipsed by a saturnalia of idleness and crime. Negro nature, left to itself, relapsed into barbarism. “But,” says Froude, the most distinguished modern English historian, “behind the immorality, behind the religiosity, there lies active and live, the horrible revival of the West African superstition; the serpent worship, the child sacrifice, and the cannibalism. There is no room to doubt it.” A missionary assured me that an instance of it occurred only a year ago, within his personal knowledge. The facts are notorious. A full account was published in one of the local newspapers, and the only result was that the president imprisoned the editor for exposing his country.[11] Bishop Kingsley, who visited the island in 1871, says: “The chief center of this detestable system (Obeahism or Vaudoux worship) is St. Vincent, where, so I am told by one who knows that island well, some sort of secret college or school of the diabolic prophets exists.... In Jamaica I was assured by a non-conformist missionary, who had long lived there, Obeah is by no means on the decrease, and in Hayti it is probably on the increase, and taking, at least until the fall and death of Salnave, shapes which when made public in the civilized world will excite more than mere disgust. But of Hayti I shall be silent, having heard more of the state of society in that unhappy place than it is prudent, for the sake of the few white residents, to tell at present.”[12] Again he says: “The same missionary told me that in Sierra Leone also, Obeah and poisoning go hand in hand.” Ibid. p. 345.